Political scientist and media critic

February 04, 2010

Kit Bond smears Obama on terror

During a conference call with conservative bloggers yesterday, Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accused the Obama administration of conducting "a terrorist protection policy" and engaging in a "jihad to close Guantanamo" (MP3 audio):

[0:21] Let me begin by saying that yesterday's hearing with the leaders of the intelligence community shows how this Administration think it's more important to protect the legal rights of terrorists than to protect Americans from terror...

[0:48] What we need in this country is an administration that has a terror-fighting policy, not a terrorist protection policy...

[10:18] They're on this jihad to close Guantanamo, which is a good campaign promise and is designed to keep ACLU, Media Matters, and the extreme left wing, where Obama still has support in the Democratic Party, happy, but it makes our country less safe...

Bond is the latest in a long line of conservatives who have suggested that President Obama is disloyal using language that draws upon the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. Sadly, his comments are unlikely to draw any further notice -- it's apparently no longer considered newsworthy to report that senators are smearing the president's loyalty to this country.

Comments

I also deplore Bond's implication that Obama is somehow sympathetic to radical Islam. However, President Obama ought to stop inviting such criticism. Given his unusual background, I think he ought to bend over backwards to dissociate himself from their odious philosophy. Instead, he has soft-pedaled his criticism of the Iranian leadership and of the Taliban, he has given inappropriate rights and respect to radical Islamic prisoners, he has implicitly supported the lie that prisoners at Gitmo are mistreated, and he has gone abroad to criticize his own country, as if our moral standing was comparable to theirs.